First Team

Only wins will do

Following Hearts’ defeat to Celtic, Alim Ozturk has underlined the importance of Hearts winning their remaining matches this season.

The Jambos are without a win in three after beating Aberdeen and with second place now out of reach, the skipper is determined to ensure the team improves in the final games in order to go into the summer break with momentum.

“It’s important for us to win the rest of our games, we can’t let the season die away,” said the Captain. “Our last game at Motherwell was just not good enough. We were better today, in the second half at least.

“Individual mistakes cost us and we’ve lost a really poor second goal from our perspective. We need to keep our concentration, because we will continue to plateau until we cut out mistakes.”

Alim is is adamant, however, that the team will continue to improve next season.

“We will rebuild and be stronger,” he continued. “Wherever we finish is a good season, that much is true, but it could have been better. People will think we’re happy with third, but we’re not. We want more.

“I don’t want to talk about the sides we’ll be competing with, but I think we have a strong team with good young talent and if we can keep the group together and bring in good players we can continue to improve.

“We beat Aberdeen twice this season, we know we can be better than them, and away to Celtic we played very well, there is not a big difference between the sides outside of mistakes and squad depth.

“We can definitely do better, there are areas we need to improve but from what I see, I don’t think we’re far away at all.”